Congress: Stop wasting time and settle budget

It’s not yet clear what led a low-level congressional staffer to go off on a raving tirade as Congress ended the government shutdown Wednesday evening. But there is a sense the country will be on a similar emotional edge if those who value our votes don’t end this budget drama sooner than later. And it’s not as if they can’t.

Both sides in this national melodrama of faulty governance have too much an appetite for the fight than the necessity of reaching broad-based agreement on a spending plan that assures the victor is not the only one who leaves the table with some measurable goodies in hand. This is a democracy that can provide its poor citizens reasonable health care without the taint of reviving government-sponsored slavery.

Clearly, Republicans have earned the heated resentment from voters for allowing party extremists to salivate at earning patriotic credibility for forcing thousands of federal workers off work while they dangled the threat of defaulting on our national debt as a holy rite of proper fiscal management before the public. The president and Democrats haven’t earned a steady moral high ground entirely. They, too, have ideologues responsible for an abysmal failure to negotiate early on and in earnest over the critical funding and taxation issues that determine the security of the country’s future.

In a few months, we will be back in this same divisive political moment. But this problem can be fixed sooner than later. Brave souls, who understand the important balance of budget restraints and fiscal opportunities, should return to negotiations now to fix a problem that both sides had a hand in crafting with their overdue respect for partisan loyalties.